Free Pennsylvania Liability Waiver Form

Pennsylvania has one of the most fully worked-out bodies of waiver law in the country, and almost all of it comes from its Supreme Court in the last thirty years. The court has said when a release is valid, how strictly it is read, that it can cover a voluntary recreational activity without being a contract of adhesion, and, in two decisions, that it can never reach recklessness or gross negligence. What the court has not decided is whether a parent can sign for a child, and there the lower courts have filled the gap in one direction. This page walks through each of those rules and the cases that made them, the state's Electronic Transactions Act, the limitation period, and the changes to make to the downloadable form for a Pennsylvania business. Sources are linked at the bottom.

This is general information, not legal advice. Have a Pennsylvania attorney review your form before you use it.

How Pennsylvania treats liability waivers

The framework goes back to Employers Liability Assurance Corp. v. Greenville Business Men's Association in 1966, which said that releases of negligence are not favourites of the law and must be construed strictly, and it was consolidated in Topp Copy Products v. Singletary in 1993. Topp Copy sets out two stages. First, a release is valid only if it does not contravene any policy of the law, concerns the private affairs of the parties rather than a matter of interest to the public or the State, and is the product of free bargaining rather than a contract of adhesion. Second, even a valid release is interpreted under standards designed to protect the signer: it is construed strictly against the party seeking immunity, the intention to release negligence must be spelled out with particularity and shown beyond doubt, and the burden of proving immunity falls on the party claiming it. Topp Copy also settled that the word negligence is not indispensable if the clause's intent is otherwise clear.

Chepkevich v. Hidden Valley Resort applied that framework to recreation. A season-pass holder fell while boarding a chairlift after asking the operator to stop it, and sued the resort. She had signed a single-page document headed RELEASE FROM LIABILITY that described skiing and the use of lifts as dangerous, listed the inherent and other risks, and released the resort from liability for its own negligence. The Superior Court had found a question of fact about whether the release was a contract of adhesion; the Supreme Court reversed, holding that a release governing a voluntary recreational activity is not an adhesion contract because the participant is free to decline the activity, and that the release was valid and enforceable against the negligence claim. The court separately held that a fall from a lift is one of the general risks inherent in skiing, so the claim was also barred by the Skier's Responsibility Act.

The most recent word is Feleccia v. Lackawanna College, decided in 2019, where two college football players injured in a tackling drill had signed a waiver of liability. The Supreme Court left the waiver in force against the ordinary negligence claims but affirmed that it could not bar claims for gross negligence or recklessness. Pennsylvania businesses therefore operate under a clear bargain: a properly drafted and signed release will defeat a negligence suit, and nothing will defeat a suit for anything worse.

Waivers signed for minors in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania's appellate courts have not squarely ruled on a parent's pre-injury release of a child's claim, and there is no statute. The guidance comes from trial courts, and it is uniform. In Shaner v. State System of Higher Education, a Dauphin County court considered a release in the application form for a university summer softball camp, signed by both the fifteen-year-old camper and her father. The camper broke her leg. After the release had been enforced at trial the court granted a post-trial motion, holding that the release was improperly enforced against the minor. Her own signature was, like any minor's contract, voidable on disaffirmance after she reached majority, and the court's own research turned up the federal decisions in Simmons v. Parkette National Gymnastic Training Center and Apicella v. Valley Forge Military Academy for the proposition that under Pennsylvania law parents do not possess the authority to release the claims or potential claims of a minor child merely because of the parental relationship. The court also drew on 42 Pa.C.S. section 5533(b), which tolls a minor's limitation period until eighteen, as a signal that the legislature does not expect minors to give up rights before majority.

For a business that serves children, the practical position is the same as in most states that follow this rule. The child's own negligence claim survives the parent's signature, and it can be brought until the child is twenty. The guardian signature still matters: it records consent to participate and the medical authorisation, it documents that the family was told the specific risks, and it can release the parent's own claims if the release is drafted with the particularity Pennsylvania demands. Because Pennsylvania's rule rests on trial-level and federal authority rather than a Supreme Court decision, a business should check with counsel for later developments before relying on any change.

What the waiver must say to hold up in Pennsylvania

Two of Topp Copy's standards do most of the work in drafting. The release must spell out the intention of the parties with particularity, and it must show beyond doubt that the parties intended to release negligence. In practice that means the document should name the activity and its setting, list the inherent risks and the other risks a participant faces, identify the business, its owners, employees and agents as the released parties, and state that the release covers injury caused by their negligence. Chepkevich's release did exactly this, on one page, under a heading that announced its purpose, and it was signed. That is the model.

Notice is the other requirement, and the Superior Court's decision in Beck-Hummel v. Ski Shawnee shows its edge. Exculpatory language was printed on the back of a snow-tubing ticket, above the line where the ticket folded over a wicket; the tuber had not bought the ticket, had not signed anything, and had not read the text. The court held that it could not conclude as a matter of law that the language was sufficiently conspicuous to put a purchaser on notice that she was giving up legal rights, and it sent the case back. Chepkevich distinguished Beck-Hummel precisely because the skier had signed a clearly titled release. The lesson is that Pennsylvania does not require particular type sizes, but it does require evidence of assent: a heading that says release, a document the participant signs or affirmatively accepts, and legible text.

Statutes add two pieces of fixed content. If you offer equine activities, the Equine Activity Immunity Act gives you protection only where signs at least three feet by two feet, in two or more locations, state that participants assume the risk of equine activities pursuant to Pennsylvania law; the act covers adult participants only, and even then bars negligence liability only where knowing voluntary assumption of risk is proven. If you run a health club, the Health Club Act governs the membership contract, and section 2170 voids any attempted waiver by the buyer of the act's provisions, so keep the injury release separate from the membership terms and make sure the latter comply.

Gross negligence and what a Pennsylvania waiver cannot cover

Pennsylvania answered this question at the highest level, twice. In Tayar v. Camelback Ski Corp. a snow tuber was injured when an employee sent tubers down the run before the previous group had cleared, and she alleged recklessness. The release she had signed referred to negligence or any other improper conduct. The Supreme Court held that releasing recklessness in a pre-injury release is against public policy, reasoning that recklessness involves a conscious disregard of a substantial risk and that allowing a business to contract out of it in advance would remove any incentive to avoid it. In Feleccia v. Lackawanna College the court extended the rule to gross negligence, affirming the refusal to apply a football waiver to gross-negligence and recklessness claims and remanding those claims for trial while the waiver continued to bar ordinary negligence.

Whether particular conduct amounted to gross negligence or recklessness is usually a jury question, so a plaintiff who pleads it will typically get past the release at the summary-judgment stage. The right response on the form is to say plainly that gross negligence, recklessness and intentional misconduct are not released, and to include a severability clause so that the enforceable part stands on its own. The right response off the form is the one that actually prevents those claims: written procedures, staff training, documented inspections and incident reports, and liability insurance.

Electronic signatures in Pennsylvania

Pennsylvania adopted the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act as the Electronic Transactions Act, 73 P.S. section 2260.101 and following. Section 2260.303 provides that a record or signature may not be denied legal effect or enforceability solely because it is in electronic form, that a contract may not be denied legal effect or enforceability solely because an electronic record was used in its formation, and that if a law requires a record to be in writing, an electronic record satisfies the law. An online waiver signed on a phone or tablet is therefore as valid as one signed in ink.

The cases make the electronic format a matter of design rather than validity. Beck-Hummel's concern was that the participant never saw or agreed to the exculpatory text; on a screen that concern is answered by an unmistakable heading, a release presented as its own block rather than buried in a scroll, a required checkbox or initials beside it, and a typed or drawn signature. Keep the participant's agreement to transact electronically, the identity and timestamp data, and the exact version of the form that was displayed, because a Pennsylvania court will look for evidence of assent and for the particularity of the language the signer actually saw.

How to use this form in Pennsylvania

Download the Word template and replace the square-bracket placeholders with your business, the activity, the location, and Pennsylvania and your county in the governing-law clause. Keep the release as a separately headed section and make sure it names the business, its owners, employees and agents and states that it covers their negligence; add the inherent risks specific to your activity to the acknowledgment. Keep the sentence excluding gross negligence, recklessness and intentional misconduct. If you operate a ski area or an off-road riding area, add a reference to the assumption of risk preserved by 42 Pa.C.S. section 7102. If horses are involved, post the statutory signs and remember that the Equine Activity Immunity Act does not cover minors. If you run a health club, use this document only for the injury release and keep the membership contract compliant with the Health Club Act. Leave the guardian block in place for participants under eighteen, but treat it as consent and evidence rather than a release of the child's claim. Delete the note to the business and have a Pennsylvania attorney review the result.

To collect signatures online, paste each section into a Waiver.com template as a text block, keep the release as its own headed block with an initials field, add the participant and guardian fields, and publish a version. Each signature is then tied to the published version and a timestamp, which gives you the evidence of assent that Pennsylvania courts asked for in Chepkevich and found missing in Beck-Hummel.